


I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

by Erato_Muse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Canon Divergence - Post-Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Cooking Lessons, Established Sirius Black/Remus Lupin, F/M, M/M, Molly finds out about Sirius and Remus's relationship, Not Canon Compliant - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Order of the Phoenix (Harry Potter), she's cool with it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24478609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erato_Muse/pseuds/Erato_Muse
Summary: AU Set during Order of the Phoenix. As Christmas at Grimmauld Place draws closer, Sirius and Molly come to a truce over cooking lessons, a Death Eater attack at Privet Drive changes everything for Harry, and are Snape and Nymphadora...flirting?
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Harry Potter, Severus Snape/Nymphadora Tonks, Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 16
Kudos: 120





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CurrerJean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurrerJean/gifts).



> During the COVID-19 pandemic, I've learned that sometimes contributing to the household outside of the house isn't always what your loved ones need or are asking from you. People who do leave and come back need someone to welcome them home. As I re-read OotP lately, I thought that if Sirius could have realized this, maybe he wouldn't have rushed off to the Department of Mysteries. Who better to explain it all than Molly? Enjoy!

“Sirius! Molly!” Remus shouted, to silence them. They stood in a drawing room, in Grimmauld Place. Remus couldn’t remember why they had started arguing, but he knew he had to make them stop.  
They paused. Not only did he seldom raise his voice, but they heard why. In his anger was the rumor of the wolf. He stood up to his full height, abandoning his sympathetic slouch.  
Remus minimized himself, so that people would not be afraid of him. He seldom showed any emotion besides benevolence and patience, because if he seemed the slightest bit frustrated, all of people’s socially ingrained fears and assumptions rose up in their minds before their hearts could overrule them….or, maybe it was the other way around. But, he had to stop Sirius and Molly’s incessant fighting, which broke out whenever Harry was at school or even just out of their sight. Sharing 12, Grimmauld Place was a tense arrangement for two people so vastly different.  
“I just want to give Harry a normal childhood. He’s not a soldier in a war, he’s a schoolboy!” Molly said, on the quavering verge of tears. Remus felt for her. He had briefly known her brothers, two solid bodied, strongly silent young men with red-gold hair, who looked as much twins as Fred and George though one was older…was it Gideon, or Fabian? He wished he remembered them better, that he had known them better…  
Sirius didn’t dress for the day when Harry was not in residence, and Harry was, thankfully, back at school. ‘Thankfully’ because he hadn’t been expelled or stripped of his wand for casting the Patronus Charm; ‘thankfully’, because he was not around while Sirius and Molly shouted; ‘thankfully’ because he didn’t have to see his godfather sitting laconically in his wingbacked brocade upholstered chair in a long black velvet dressing gown, and not a jot of clothing under it. His runic tattooes were visible on his chest, Alchemical runes that spoke of the journey of the soul. To everyone but Remus, who had traced them with his fingertips and tasted the salty skin they were drawn on while Sirius explained their meanings, they smacked of a Dark Wizard’s markings, of secret allegiances…  
“I’m not trying to make a soldier of him,” Sirius growled. His animal within showed in his voice, too. “I’m trying to keep him alive. Forewarned is forearmed, isn’t it? I’ll be damned if I let him tiptoe through the fucking posies…”  
“Excuse me!” Molly cried.  
“Language, Sirius,” Remus said wearily.  
“He’s a smart boy. You throw him one hint he gets ten things out of it. I just want him to be on his toes,” Sirius said.  
“I would have thought you, of all people, would want him to get on with life as normal! What sort of life for him did you have planned out, the three of you?” Molly said.  
Remus’s hackles rose…he always joked that, with his peripatetic life, moving from one place to another chasing work, between the Muggle and Wizarding worlds, he didn’t know enough people to be in the closet…but when Molly said ‘you three’, he was sure she meant The Three of Us, as Sirius called it-himself, Remus, and Harry, as a family. It was what he called them when he dreamed out loud of the life they were going to have together, seeing the word and chasing the sun.  
“Sod this bloody war, Moony. Fucking Hell! When its all said and done, the Three of Us are skiving off to Costa Rica, Britain can get on without us, I think”, or “The Three of Us need to see Bali. I’m not dying or going back to prison without seeing Bali”, he would muse, when he was placidly drunk and sated from lovemaking, when 12, Grimmauld Place was empty of Order of the Phoenix operatives and it was just the two of them. Almost a family, just missing Harry, who was still legally in the custody of his aunt and uncle, instead of in a room down the hall decorated with Quidditch posters, doing his homework, happy and loved, as they dreamed, as they wished..  
Molly must have overheard him and Sirius, or seen them…  
“The three of us, whom, exactly?” Sirius asked coolly.  
“You, James, and Lily! What did you talk over when they asked you to be godfather? How were you expected to raise him, if something happened to them?” Molly demanded, her voice vacillating from shrill to deep, in the way of furious mothers.  
“I would die for him. I think that’s what was expected,” Sirius said coldly.  
“Well, I should think Harry would rather you lived for him! But, that’s the one thing you don’t have a clue as to how to do!” Molly continued to storm. “You have some good ideas in Order meetings, it’s the only time I see you something like alive! The rest of the time, Sirius Orion Black, you’re a sodden, drunken mess, half mad and angry at the very air!” Molly said.  
“You would be too, if you knew what went on in this bloody house! You think this is a sanctuary?!” Sirius demanded loudly.  
This was the distraught temper that made people assume Sirius was dangerous, when in fact he was just damaged. By what, he had only alluded to, for as long as Remus had known him, and they had now known each other longer than Remus had known anyone else he knew. He couldn’t tell if it was abuse, neglect, or an aristocratic version of both that had shaped his friend into the person he knew, who was doggedly loyal, but suicidally reckless, one who thought uncannily of survival with a paranoiac’s fine honed knowledge of potential threats hiding in innocuous trappings. The problem was, as refined as his instincts were, he couldn’t keep his cool when someone touched a nerve, and there were many exposed nerves beneath the black ink….  
“It could be,” Molly hissed coldly, her brown eyes narrowed. “You don’t understand your part in all this. You’re not a guerrilla, or a spy, you’re not the cavalry-you’re home base. You welcome people when their cover’s compromised and they barely made it out alive, when they’ve taken fire, they’re hit and they’re wounded and they need healing on the inside and out. At the very least, a warm bed and a warm meal. You see this house as a Hell and you make it one-but have you ever thought about how it affects everyone else?”  
“Well, you fill that role so amiably, Molly, I’d hate to deprive you,” Sirius said acidly.  
“I’m going home,” she said, without dramatics, or malice.  
Remus and Sirius both looked at her in surprise. She addressed Remus, and said, “I…I thought I could do this, but…being here, in the middle of it all….I need to be home. God, I miss my home…”  
“Yes, yes of course, Molly,” Remus said, reached out for her hand. It was smooth, plump, and soft. It was a pity that Molly saw Sirius as a walking hand grenade, and she represented to him loathed maternal authority. They both had a fierce goodness, the kind Remus adored in anyone he found it in.  
“So, you’ll have to truly be the master of this house…make it a home,” Molly said to Sirius. “We all know there’s a war on…you have to help people forget that, while they’re here.”  
“I don’t know how,” he said. He looked at Remus, asking with his eyes if she was right, if this was what he should do, if this would be good for the Three of Them.  
“Well,” Molly said grumpily, “I’m not leaving this minute, am I? You’re doing admirably on the cleaning, but you’re going to have to learn how to cook.”  
“Cook?” Sirius asked.  
Molly raised an auburn eyebrow. “Don’t want to get your gentleman’s hands dirty?”  
“I’ve never cooked anything before, in the traditional sense. I mean, does microwaving a hamburger count?” Sirius asked.  
“Not with me, it doesn’t! Kitchen! Go!” Molly said. Sirius looked alarmed, and shot Remus a look that appealed for rescue. Remus laughed, relieved, as Molly marched Sirius into the kitchen.

“Molly, this is what house elves are for!” Sirius whined.  
“You loathe your house elf!” Molly pointed out.  
“He was always narcing on me to my mother, squawking to her about what I had in my room, where I was going, who I was writing to…and making it all sound worse than it was…”Sirius said.  
“Oh, poor lamb, I’m sorry he was culpable in getting your sling shot or your dirty magazines taken away,” Molly said sarcastically.  
“You think my mother was the sort to confiscate my things?” Sirius said. “She could make you think things, my mother.”  
“What do you mean, think things?” Molly asked. She maintained a disagreeable tone as a matter of principle, but something about his eyes and tone made her both curious and suspect she knew what he meant, all at once.  
“Until you gave up. Told her what she wanted to know, did what she wanted you to do…she could make you feel like your whole body was on fire, or all your bones were broken, or you were drowning….all because I took a walk to a bloody cinema to see ‘Star Wars’, or had a Led Zeppelin album under my bed,” Sirius said. “Bugger,” he said uselessly, to ground himself. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It was years ago.”  
“Stop swearing! Do you want Harry picking that up?” Molly said. She sighed. Her shoulders, neck, and bosom relaxed. “And, of course it matters! Would you want Harry treated that way?”  
“Of course not! To use dark magic on a child…” Sirius said, and shuddered. “Now, you see why I can’t live in my mother’s house?”  
“It’s your house now, Sirius. You have a family of your own, now. And you have to start caring for them. Harry needs a home besides those Muggles who starve him and treat him as if he’s some kind of…now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against Muggles…but those Muggles! You understand me?” Molly said.  
Sirius nodded. He did. Harry looked so much like James, and had his kind heart…but in some ways, Harry reminded Sirius more of himself at that age-a kid as ready to run away from his home as a bullet is to speed from a fired gun. He couldn’t tell what abuses lay behind the ‘anywhere is better than there’ attitude Harry had about his aunt’s and uncle’s house, but he knew it was different than the sulky malaise Molly’s youngest son Ron had about his home. Harry wasn’t bored with life-he treasured a secret hope that almost embarrassed him, but came out in abrupt flashes of enthusiasm, that life could and would be better if he could only get away from the very people that were supposed to love him.  
The Potters had given Sirius that…but, he had to admit that he hadn’t given that to Harry. In his dreams, they, the Three of Them were just a few twists of fate away from living in a bungalow by the beach in Belize or Thailand. In reality, he was a drunken hot mess who was currently not wearing pants of any kind, Harry had seen him lose his temper, and he still had to go home to people who didn’t want him. Sirius hadn’t made things any better.  
“Take care of the Order of the Phoenix, and you’ll better care for Harry…and Remus,” Molly said.  
“Remus and I….” Sirius began.  
He didn’t give a toss what people knew or supposed about his sexuality, but he knew Remus was perpetually job seeking and needed a sterling reputation. Not everyone was open minded, or kind.  
“I saw you kissing. Not just kissing, you had one leg around him and both hands on his bum,” Molly said, in a no-nonsense voice.  
“Well…he has a perfect bum, under all that tweed,” Sirius said.  
For the first time, Sirius and Molly laughed together.  
“I nearly made a fool of myself! I was going to try and get something going with him and Tonks, you know!” Molly said.  
“Nymphadora? My little cousin? Well, I’d simply have to duel her for his hand. That’s a romantic gesture, and how most disputes are settled, in my family,” Sirius said.  
“Well, how was I to know? What am I saying? Now that I know, I think anyone could tell. The way you look at him, the way he calms you down…” Molly said. “At first, though, I just thought you knew each other very well.”  
“Not well enough-we did spend a fair bit of time there each thinking the other was a spy,” Sirius said. “It was nasty, in the old days, towards the end. Bloody war. Couldn’t even trust the person you sleep beside. Even when we fucked, there was suspicion in bed with us, like a third party that wanted to join in.”  
Molly pulled a wooden spoon from a peg on the wall, and hit Sirius’s tattooed knuckles. “Stop swearing! But, I can’t imagine reconnecting has been effortless, if things got so bad at the end…”  
“Its all out in the open now…we both know the truth now,” Sirius said. “I do want things for us, Molly-the three of us. I want us to travel, see the world…but have a home, too. Is that contradictory?”  
“I think wherever you are is Harry’s home. I can see how attached he is to you-that’s why I’m trying to shape you up! He’d love to see the world with you and Remus, but you’ve got to feed him something, haven’t you? Now, you’re going to make bread,” Molly said.  
“Am I?” Sirius asked.  
“Yes!” Molly scolded shrilly, to get him to focus. “Now, summon what you need!”  
“Um…Accio, eggs. And…milk. Flour? Sugar? Do you use sugar?” Sirius asked.  
“Sugar?!” Molly demanded.  
From that point on, Sirius made no further suggestions, he merely did as he was told and summoned or Transfigured what Molly said they needed.

Sirius did nothing by halves-he was either indifferent to the point of scorn, or enthusiastic and thorough. The latter made him an excellent lover, Remus was reminded often. Sirius’s triumphs in the kitchen made him so happy, that he was in a playfully amorous mood, treating Remus to his puppyishly affectionate side, which he preferred to his drunken and moody side. Once Sirius figured out that magical cooking was basically just Transfiguration, he took to it like a duck in water.  
He waved his wand in playful, looping arcs like wild cursive, and with a smile that lit his gray eyes and made him look young and handsome again, onions became hot, fragrant French onion soup, boxes of cheap pasta Summoned from a Muggle grocer became spaghetti Bolognese, and vegetables and a loaf of smushed bread still in the plastic packaging became pot pies with delightfully viscous gravy and firm, fresh vegetables beneath the crust.  
When Molly was confident that no one would starve under his watch, she prepared to depart for the West Country, to her home in Ottery St. Catchpole.  
“The Three of Us thank you, Molly,” Sirius said. “You’re right-rule number one of being a parent: you have to feed the kid something! And Remus seems pretty happy, too.”  
“Well, after all that banging against the wall I’ve been putting up with since the start of this summer, I’d say that’s not down to the food. I’m glad there’s no suspicion in your bed anymore, but your bed might not be able to take much more,” Molly said.  
“Don’t worry-we won’t let Harry see us in flagrante delicto,” Sirius said.  
“I hope not! But, if a child sees their parents kiss or hold hands every now and again, it gives them a good idea of what a marriage should look and feel like: warm, and affectionate,” Molly said.  
Sirius was pleasantly flustered that Molly had called his and Remus’s long, complicated, interrupted and resumed partnership a marriage. Was she overbearing? To be sure! But, she respected people on their merit, and accepted him and Remus.  
“Sure, but…you know…explaining to him about me and Remus…I don’t know how…” Sirius said.  
“Well, you couldn’t even make bread a fortnight ago. You can do a lot more than fight, drink, shoot your mouth off, and die, when you put your back into it,” Molly said.  
“I will refrain from making any innuendos containing the phrase ‘putting my back into it’, or any derivatives,” Sirius said.  
Molly laughed. “Harry loves you, and Remus,” Molly said. “Love is all you need. And you have the love…you just don’t know what to do with yourself, sometimes!”  
“You’ve solved that, Molly,” Sirius said affectionately, gratefully.  
He loathed the prospect of Severus Snape catching him in an apron…but it was better than not knowing what to do with himself. He looked forward to Christmas, with Harry.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius trades barbs with Snape; Remus surprises Sirius with an early Christmas gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who read, gave kudos, and commented! This was meant to be a one-shot, but I'll do some bonus chapters covering my take on Harry's Christmas at Grimmauld Place. Peace and love! Be safe, everyone:)

“Taken up a new hobby, I see, Black?” Severus Snape said with a sneer, as he crossed the threshold of 12, Grimmauld Place, and looked Sirius’s apron up and down.  
“More like a necessity. Most people eat food to survive, Snape-its truly innovative how you manage to subsist on bitterness, regret, and Potion fumes,” Sirius said, and closed the door once Snape’s billowing black robe was done sweeping into the entrance hall.   
Snape was hung up on heritage, and always had been. Back in school, Sirius had overheard him many times protesting to his Slytherin cronies that his Muggleborn best friend, Lily Evans was ‘not like the others’, ‘different’, not a ‘normal Mudblood.’ She chucked him on her own time-Sirius hadn’t had the heart to tell the girl how her friend talked about her behind her back. For all her grit and determination, for all she was a no-nonsense small town girl from Yorkshire who could usually handle an unvarnished truth, there was something tender and sort of fragile about Lily, to her core, and neither James or Sirius wanted to be the one to shatter her illusions about her oldest friend.  
These days, Snape compensated for his own half Muggle heritage by dressing like the most Wizardy Wizard that ever Wizarded, in imposing, severe, but flowing robes, and behaved with draconian sternness. Sirius wasn’t sure what Snape was dropping by Grimmauld Place for, but since Molly had left for the Burrow, Sirius had tried to heed her advice to make the Order operatives that floated in and out of the place feel welcome.  
Maybe he went a bit overboard, even.  
“Hot water bottles beneath the covers, mate? Seriously?” Bill Weasley had asked jocularly, on one occasion.  
“I saw it in a movie, once. Anyway, who doesn’t like toasty covers?” Sirius had asked.  
Bill had shaken his head. “Mum got to you,” he said knowingly.  
If Bill or one of his brothers had dropped by, that would have been a pleasant surprise-a laugh and a couple of drinks. Snape was as devoid of humor as a corpse was of breath. It had made him an easy target in school, easy to trick, easy to wind up, but Sirius had long since learned that life wasn’t a joke. He saw Snape into the sitting room, and poured himself a brandy. He held out an empty glass, offering Snape a drink, but he dourly responded,  
“I, unlike you, tend to spend the daylight hours sober.”  
“Oh, so all bets are off at sundown?” Sirius said.  
Snape aimed a sulky glare at him. Sirius knew he shouldn’t have given in to the temptation, but wordplay was one of his vices.  
“Is Lupin currently in residence here? I have his potion,” Snape said.   
“Oh. The full moon…its at the end of this week, isn’t it? Bloody Hell…” Sirius said. He’d forgotten.   
“The days must slip through your fingers, here in solitude,” Snape drawled silkily.  
“I learned different ways to count time in Azkaban,” Sirius said. That did it. He could see Snape’s chest and shoulders tighten, fear flit across his dark eyes.   
Azkaban was Snape’s worst fear-as it should be, he was a known Death Eater who had slithered out of being decried and charged as one by slinking around Dumbledore’s skirts at the crucial hour of the war.  
“The way you speak of it, one would almost think you were proud of your time served,” Snape said.  
“The way you call Voldemort ‘The Dark Lord’, one would almost think you were still his lapdog,” Sirius said.  
“You have no right! You! Making souffles and cups of tea while I put myself at risk every moment, of every day! The Ministry breathing down my neck in my classroom! That ridiculous Umbridge woman, questioning me about….” Snape’s rant raged and then sputtered into territory that he wasn’t willing to broach before Sirius.  
“About your past as a Death Eater? Well, I think we all have a few questions about that. Dumbledore insists that you can be trusted. I remember you, Severus Snape. You and your mates, Avery and Mulciber, the things you used to do to the younger kids, the first and second years, and the girls. Always picked soft targets, you lot,” Sirius said.  
“Not unlike you and Potter,” Severus spat.  
“You call yourself a soft target? Between my mates and you and your’s, it was always ‘reprisal equals fair play’. But on your own? You Slytherins loved tormenting people you thought were weaker,” Sirius said. He paused, and added sadly, “She loved you, you know.”  
Snape’s faced veered from indignation as he readied his next retort, then hollowed shock at the allusion to Lily.  
“She loved you. And I never understood why that wasn’t enough for you,” Sirius said.  
“That’s quite enough,” Remus said, entering the room. “Shall we let Lily rest?”  
Remus and Lily had a special bond. They told each other innumerable secrets that no one else dared try to penetrate. The strength of that bond still held, and both Sirius and Snape desisted.  
“Your potion, Lupin,” Snape snarled.  
“Thank you again, Severus. I’m very fortunate to know a potionmaker, and that you’ve taken it upon yourself to learn this particular brew,” Remus said kindly.  
“The formula was only just released for general preparation two years ago. Its not widely known. I should be charging you quite handsomely for such an exclusive and rare service,” Snape said, surely a jab at Lupin’s perpetual financial depletion.  
“If its gold you want, I’ll wire it to you. What do you need it for, your growing family?” Sirius said sarcastically.  
Snape went pale. Sirius was satisfied to have driven home that maybe Remus was poor, and suffered from lycanthropy, but at least he was loved-not a moneygrubbing racist poseur Death Eater who had broken the heart of the sweetest girl any of them had ever known.   
“Thank you for the potion, Severus,” Lupin said.  
“Good day!” Snape said, set the potion vial on the coffee table, and strode out, his robes following behind him like a shadow.   
The door slammed. Remus flinched at the echo of it.  
“Remus, I know, I know. I shouldn’t take the bait, I shouldn’t let him get to me after all these years, Dumbledore trusts him and the rest of us should, too, yada yada, blah blah,” Sirius said.  
“I wasn’t going to say anything, Sirius. I would say he rather renewed hostilities by so aggressively pursuing your recapture to Azkaban. I can understand if you’re still angry,” Remus said. “But, I forgave you, didn’t ?”  
“For?” Sirius asked.  
“That prank of your’s…telling Snape how to disable the Whomping Willow. If he had made it to the Shack, if James hadn’t stopped it…I would have killed and eaten him. I wouldn’t have been able to resist the smell of human flesh. And, I would have woken up with that on my conscience, and my record. Who knows what would have become of me? But, I forgave you,” Remus said.  
Sirius felt doused with cold water in horror, and guilt bloomed like Devil’s Snare in his heart.  
“Moony, no! I was never trying to get you in trouble! I was just sick of him following us around, trying to figure out your secret, I just said a shitty, impulsive thing to Snape because I was sick of him…but I could have ruined your life…” Sirius said.  
Remus put his arms around Sirius’s shoulders, and together they sat close on the couch.  
“I know how sorry you are, Sirius. I know. But, my point is, no matter how old or fresh the blood in the water, can’t you and Severus put it all aside? For Harry?” Remus said.  
“He loathes Harry!” Sirius said.  
“Yes, I think he loathes the sight of the child he could have had with Lily, if he hadn’t cocked it all up,” Remus said.  
“She told you a lot, Lily, didn’t she?” Sirius said.  
Remus nodded gravely.  
“She felt that deeply about him?” Sirius asked.  
“We were a lot alike, Lily and I. We go down with the ship, like the captain of the Titanic,” Remus said cryptically.   
“But, she chucked him,” Sirius said.  
“He’d abandoned her in all the ways that count. And even gentle people have pride. Sometimes we don’t realize how much and how well we were loved until the one who loved us is irrevocably gone. Snape knows now how much he loved Lily in return, and seeing Harry in his classroom and in the halls of Hogwarts is a daily reminder that she married, had a life and a child, with someone else. But, he’s Lily’s son, so he has done what he could to protect Harry and minimize his suffering, when it really counted,” Remus said.  
“So, you want me to run him a footbath next time he comes through?” Sirius said.  
Remus laughed. “Just be civil. Now, enough about Snape-help me get this place ready for Christmas. Are you making a pudding?”  
“Yes, but Molly will have my balls on a charm bracelet if I do the goose-the goose is her territory,” Sirius said. They both laughed, and the tension in the air dissipated.   
Sirius and Remus strung tinsel along the fireplace mantles and stair railings, and wreaths of holly with bloodred berries and white blackthorn flowers on the doors.   
“I don’t think Christmas has ever been celebrated in this house, before,” Sirius said.  
“What sort of holidays did your family keep?” Remus asked, as they transfigured a houseplant into a Christmas tree.  
“At this time of year, Saturnalia. The old Roman celebration. It’s supposed to be when the Golden Age returns to earth, and all men are equal,” Sirius said.  
“Oh, so that is where the concept of ‘Peace on Earth and Goodwill Towards All Men’ at Christmastide came from!” said Remus, ever the scholar.  
“ ‘Goodwill towards all men’ , to be sure, but I don’t know about the peace on earth, bit-Saturnalia is kind of a drunken riot. Only time I saw my dad something like alive. But then, it is supposed to be kind of a topsy-turvy occasion. The social order is reversed, servants are masters, good citizens are madmen. There’s even a jester called the Lord of Misrule that comes through and stirs up bad behavior, and mummers in scary masks instead of carolers,” Sirius said.  
“Sounds like a rather diabolical Christmas,” Remus said.  
“Diabolical Christmas…hmm, am I about thirty years too late to found a punk rock band called Diabolical Christmas?” Sirius said.  
“Yes, I’m afraid. But, we can play the Ramones Christmas album. Haven’t the Ramones got a Christmas album?” Remus said.  
“Don’t worry about it, Moony. I think this is more your speed,” Sirius said. He pointed at the wizard wireless radio in the corner, and it began to play ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham.  
Remus smiled. “I love George Michael!” he said.  
“I know, Moony. You were none too subtle about your crush on him,” Sirius said. “You know, Molly reckons Harry won’t mind about us. Being…as we are. Together.”  
“Together, and gay?” Remus said. “Harry has a big heart. He looks very much like James…but his instincts about people and the way he loves them: that’s all Lily.”  
“The best of both of them,” Sirius said.  
“Quite,” Remus agreed, and hung ornaments on the tree.   
“I’m worried for him. No, terrified, really. This Ministry presence at Hogwarts…it’s like they’re trying to trip Dumbledore and Harry up in a lie. The weight of the government against a little boy!” Sirius said.  
“Harry isn’t a little boy-he’s a young man,” Remus said. “Governments can’t be changed overnight. That’s a process. We’ll work on the Ministry bit by bit, but for now, we can give Harry a happy Christmas. Goose, pudding, cheesy music, games, a Quidditch game on the telly.”  
“Telly? My mother never allowed television in this place!” Sirius said.  
“Well, I sort of had an early Christmas present…” Remus said.  
He waved his wand over an armchair Sirius now realized he hadn’t recognized to begin with, and it Transfigred into its true form: an old, wood paneled television set, with a rabbit eared antenna.  
“Moony!” Sirius said.  
“Before you say I exhausted my meager funds, it was something I already had, in storage,” Remus said. “I thought it would help pass the time, and maybe bridge the gap, with Harry. It only gets Wizarding World Network, and…well, you could watch Quidditch with him, on Christmas Day.”  
“I’d like him to open up about school, how he’s being treated, that Umbridge woman and all…you can only say so much in a letter,” Sirius said.  
“Yes, but, let’s start with Quidditch on Christmas Day. Make some memories with him. He’ll open up, in time,” Remus said.  
When Remus said so, Sirius believed it.  
“Happy Christmas, Moony,” Sirius said, although Christmas Day was still some days away.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius and Remus reconnect, but are interrupted by an unexpected development

A heavy rain, audibly splattering on the roof of the townhouse, fell over London. The echo of the rain rang in Sirius’s bedroom. Big, loud sounds had always made him feel safe, for some reason. Noisy spells like ‘Bombardo!’ which broke down doors and other obstacles, loud, thrashing punk rock music with lyrics that ran together unintelligibly like a freeway pileup, or the roar of the engine of his motorbike, and the wind racing around it. And, the rain. Its loud sound seemed to cloak him and Remus as they lay in each other’s arms, covered up in an old velvet coverlet.  
“I love the rain,” Remus murmured into Sirius’s tattoo of the alchemical rune for the planet Neptune, on his chest.  
Sirius stroked Remus’s back. His torso was long, thin, and no fat softened the layers between soft but scarred skin and bones. The vertebrae of his spine, and his ribs were like the keys of an instrument.  
“I suppose it won’t be a white Christmas, though,” Sirius lamented.  
“Oh, that’s all right,” Remus said. “I hate snow, you know that.”  
Sirius laughed. “Well, that’s me and Jamie’s fault, isn’t it? You were telling us about Muggle stop motion Christmas cartoons…”  
“And you two took the concept of Frosty the Snowman and weaponized it,” Remus said.  
Sirius laughed, his distinctive post-Azkaban hoarse crow, and said, “We charmed them to come to life. We never expressly told them to pelt you with snowballs.”  
“What else would they do, Sirius? The charm you and James used essentially made them golems,” Remus said.  
“Hmm…reckon we’re the first students in Hogwarts history to accidentally use the secrets of the apocryphal Kabbalah in a snowball fight?” Sirius mused.  
“So many of your greatest achievements, unrecorded,” Remus quipped.  
Sirius laughed, and nuzzled lovingly into Remus’s neck, nipping and kissing it. Remus, normally so mild, restrained, and professional, moaned low in his throat, and beneath the palm of Sirius’s hand, the small of his back arched. Remus’s eyes were half shuttered in pleasure, and they glowed amber like the flame of a candle, giving off a faint light, like that of a stalking predator in a dark forest.  
“Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night,” Sirius whispered, as he caressed Remus’s too thin torso, his pert buttocks, his scarred back with its prominent shoulder blades, and his legs, which were entangled with Sirius’s own, “What immortal hand or eye can frame thy fearful symmetry…”  
It was the night before the full moon, and Remus was too close to the edge of wild to hold back. Sirius’s words and his touch stoked the hair on his arms and legs to gooseflesh along his trembling skin as they kissed passionately. “Sirius,” he moaned, gasped, raggedy, as they broke apart for air. Sirius felt the essence of the animal he had knitted to his soul rise. The creature in him wanted to claim Remus as his own. He stood on his knees, slipped his hands under Remus’s shins, bent his knees, wrapped Remus’s legs around him, pulled him close, and kissed him hard, and deep. Remus moaned into his mouth, and the reverberations of it shook beneath Sirius’s skin. He rutted against Remus, any part of him he could, his stomach, his thigh, as he kissed him.  
When their passion had faded to a drowsy shared satisfaction, they lay entwined in the quiet after the rain. Sirius was awakened by the thumping sound of someone tumbling through the Floo network.  
“Bugger!” Sirius swore, and threw on his dressing gown.  
He had promised to wear proper clothes, more, but he figured it probably wouldn’t be Harry, arriving by Floo.  
He was right. It was Tonks, and Arthur Weasley. He poured them both glasses of port, which he had always been told was good to drink after a long journey, whereas brandy was for evenings at home or lengthy visits.  
“Cheers, coz!” Tonks said, and winked as she downed her’s.  
“Arthur, what’s going on? Is it something to do with the Ministry?” Sirius asked.  
“No, our cover’s still good. It’s Harry. He’s on his way here, now. Hagrid’s bringing him-on that motorcycle of your’s, actually!” Arthur said.  
“Oh, he still has that monster? I used to call her Kali-goddess of death, you know,” Sirius said.  
“No way! That’s fuckin’ A!” Tonks said starrily.  
He got the feeling Andromeda had told Tonks outsized stories of him when she was growing up.  
“I’d be horrible on a motorbike-have to lean to stay on, don’t you? I’d go arse over tits, bet you anything…” Tonks said.  
Sirius laughed. “You’d do fine. You can be quite…agile, if you put your mind to it, I’ve seen you,” he said. “Why is Harry coming here? Hogwarts doesn’t let out for hols until the end of the week. I expected him on Sol Invictus.”  
“Huh?” Tonks said.  
“Christmas Eve,” Sirius corrected himself. He’d used a Saturnalia term he’d grown up with.  
“Well, you see, Sirius, Dumbledore is reconfiguring some things in light of unexpected recent events,” Arthur said, sounding like exactly what he was, a Ministry bureaucrat.  
“What’s happened, Arthur?” Sirius said.  
“Sirius…Harry’s aunt and uncle have died,” Arthur announced.  
Sirius was shocked. He gathered that they were loathsome people, and Harry was about as attached to them as Sirius had been to his cell in Azkaban, but they were still his last blood family left on earth. Lily’s sister…he had never met her, but she had been a bit of a figure of fun, between him, James, and Lily. Lily, masking her pain at Petunia’s rejection, had made her letters from and visits to Petunia sound like an episode of “Keeping Up Appearances”-her sister in hideous Laura Ashley with a Lady Diana hairstyle that didn’t suit her nose, a Northern girl bending over backwards to remake herself in the London suburbs. Now, she was dead. Did they, the Evans sisters meet beyond the Veil? Or was the gulf between Wizards and Muggles so wide that they went to different afterlives?  
“How?” Sirius asked.  
“It looks like Voldemort got suspicious about why Harry, one of the most symbolic and portentous magical children to be born in ages, was being housed in a suburb in Surrey. While Harry’s been at school, he had some Charm Detectors on his side scan the place for protections. The charm that protects Harry protects the Dursleys too…when Harry’s there. But, he wasn’t, so…” Tonks said.  
For an Auror, she was squeamish to say it, so Sirius said it for her, “They were murdered.”  
“Just the parents. Dudley, their son, was out, and he’s staying with an Aunt,” Tonks said.  
“That would be Margery Dursley,” Arthur said. “I heard a lot about that one, from the team that had to deflate her.”  
“Oh, yes, the night Harry ran away. I was…keeping an eye on him, at the time, I saw him Engorge her. Wandlessly! She did call his mother a bitch and his father a layabout-turnabout’s fair play,” Sirius said. “So, the charm, its broken now? Harry has no protection? It was all tied to that house?”  
“Seems so. His relatives are dead, there’s no reason for Harry to go back there, so, he’s…” Arthur said.  
“Vulnerable. But, he’s on his way here, and its safe enough,” Tonks said.  
“I can’t imagine what a state he’s in,” Sirius said.  
Remus appeared in his pajamas and robe. “How much did you hear?” Sirius asked him.  
“Everything,” Remus said gravely.  
They exchanged a look. They had gotten their wish, but they never would have wished it to transpire, like this.  
“Molly’s in a state, but we thought you two would be the first people Harry would want to see,” Arthur said.  
As if on cue, they all inclined to the sound of a loud motorbike engine outside.  
“Ah-Hagrid, Harry, and My Lady Kali,” Sirius said.  
He waved his wand along the length of his body, and instead of his black velvet dressing gown, he was wearing a shirt, waistcoat, pants, and long, plum velvet overcoat. He went to the door, and opened it for the giant and the boy.  
“Hagrid! I see you took care of my wife while I was away,” Sirius said, looking fondly at the black and chrome beast that was Kali.  
Hagrid chuckled fondly. “Fine contraption, she is! That flight charm hasn’t worn off in all these years!”  
“Glad to hear it. How’d you like the ride, Harry? You loved Kali when you were a little boy,” Sirius said.  
Harry smiled, though there was still palpable sadness in his green eyes. “I used to dream about a flying motorbike, when I was a kid. Uncle Vernon didn’t like it when I talked about it. He hated anything that sounded…magical. I guess I never forgot you, really, Sirius.”  
“’Course not, Harry,” Sirius said. He looked into Harry’s eyes. They were Lily’s exactly, so full of love, pain, strength, heart, soul. “we could never forget each other.”  
Sirius didn’t know if that had been the right thing to say, and what it meant to Harry, but it seemed to unlock something.  
“Sirius…its my fault. I get people hurt, and killed. He always ends up getting someone else, when he comes after me. I know the Dursleys didn’t love me…but they were still human. I…get people killed,” Harry said.  
“This ain’t yer fault, Harry,” Hagrid said. “What I tell ya, when ya first asked me about You Know Who? He just likes killin’. A wizard can get addicted to usin’ bad magic, and that’s him and his like-they’re hooked on it.”  
Astute, Sirius thought, and nodded in concord. “Its true, Harry. Look at my family-generations of Blacks, black as pitch, as dark as dark wizards come. There’s light, and there’s dark, and we all choose our path,” he said.  
“You ain’t so bad, Sirius! Black sheep in ev’ry family, ain’t it? Good sort, you are-Yeh’ve just got a temper, tha’s all,” Hagrid said, as if Sirius was still a rowdy boy in school.  
“Thanks, Hagrid! Now, both of you come in, the rain may start again, any minute,” Sirius said.  
Harry and Hagrid entered. At the sight of Remus, Harry made a relieved beeline for him, and Remus wrapped him in a big hug.  
“How are you holding up, Harry? You must be shocked,” Remus said.  
“I feel like its my fault. Sirius and Hagrid said its not,” Harry said.  
“Well, I’m inclined to agree with Sirius and Hagrid,” Remus said sagely.  
“Harry, for the time being, until Dumbledore can assess the situation, this will be your home during vacations. Of course, you can come visit the Burrow whenever you choose. There are a lot of people who care about you, Harry,” Arthur said.  
“So sorry about your folks,” Tonks said, with aching sincerity.  
“They hated me. They thought I was a freak, and that my parents were, too,” he said bitterly.  
“You don’t have to love them any more now that they’re dead, than when they were alive, Harry,” Sirius said, “and you don’t have to feel everything you’re going to feel tonight.”  
“Sirius is right. It was very…complicated for me, when my father died,” Remus said.  
“Were you…not close?” Harry asked.  
“He said some rash things about werewolves…to a werewolf, called Fenrir Greyback, who bit me in retaliation, to avenge himself on my father,” Remus said. “my father was a Magical Creatures scholar, and in his writings he disseminated the theories of his time, about werewolves. It was hard for me to understand how he could write some of the things he did…how he could believe some of the things he did. I thought my chances of being seen as a man out in the world were very slim if my own father thought I was a….”  
His voice broke for a minute, but he composed himself and said, “Suffice it to say, I can imagine how you feel, right now, Harry.”  
“Thanks, Professor,” Harry said. Arthur and Tonks gave Harry lingering looks of concern, and then Tonks said to Sirius,  
“Well, there is a bit of a bright side to all this.”  
“Oh?” Sirius asked.  
“Arabella Figg saw the intruders enter the Dursley’s home, and described them to the corresponding Aurors. One of them matches the description of Peter Pettigrew given by witnesses in Albania that saw him with Bertha Jorkins,” Tonks said.  
“Two murders is an awful lot of activity for a dead man…” Sirius said.  
“Exactly,” Tonks said, with a slow and satisfied nod. “if we can follow up on these leads, prove he’s alive, and a servant of Voldemort, you may just have your pardon this time next year.”  
“Don’t be overly optimistic,” Sirius said.  
“I’m going to pass it on to MACUSA, too,” she said. “you know they rescinded their extradition treaty with the British Ministry during the Barty Crouch days.”  
Sirius gave her a look of dark agreement, and nodded. “Are you suggesting that I emigrate? Become one of those shabbily alluring expatriates living off offshore money, haunting an expensive hotel in New York City? What about this place? The Order of the Phoenix needs a home base. And, Harry needs a home,” he said.  
“Maybe he could use a fresh start, too. And Remus: werewolves have more rights in America,” Tonks suggested.  
“Let’s play it as it lays, Dora,” Sirius said, and glanced at Remus and Harry, who were heading to the kitchen.  
He followed them, and pulled some mugs from a cupboard. “Moony, have you got a chocolate bar?” Sirius asked.  
Remus produced a Cadbury bar. Sirius broke the chocolate, put the halves of it in three mugs, waved his wand and produced the most fragrantly chocolatey hot chocolate topped with frothy whipped cream that Harry had ever seen.  
Harry’s eyes were sad, but he smiled.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry settles into Grimmauld Place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Harry's POV.

Harry decided not to attend the Dursleys’ funeral.   
“There’s no one expecting me there, nothing I want to say or remember, and besides: I’m probably suspect number one in their murder,” he’d told Remus and Sirius.   
Harry was joking, but they took it quite seriously and he wished he hadn’t said anything.  
“No, no, don’t be daft,” Sirius said. “They don’t make a big deal of this, mind, but every police force in Britain knows to pass a certain class of mysterious death over to a bureau in London, who looks in on it, and they pass it over to the Auror division at the Ministry. No one on either side is thick enough to suspect a wizard in his fifth year at Hogwarts of a murder like this, Harry.”  
Remus cleared his throat, and Harry guessed that he objected to the use of the word ‘murder’ twice in the same conversation.   
“Is there anything at your aunt and uncle’s home that you need?” Remus asked.  
“I take everything I need with me,” Harry said, and saw Remus and Sirius exchange a look. Harry wouldn’t have called it pity, but it was close enough to it that he didn’t like it.   
“Look, Harry…I know this place isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy, but its what we’ve got at the moment, and Moony and I just want you to know that it’ll be your home as long as you want it to be,” Sirius said.  
No one talked to Harry this way, ever. He didn’t know what to do with it, but he appreciated it.   
“Thanks, Sirius,” Harry said. 

In the days leading up to Christmas, 12 Grimmauld Place vacillated between full of people and activity, visitors popping in suddenly with a story to tell over a glass of port and a shepherds’ pie or beef and potatoes, or quiet and empty save for Remus, Sirius and, Harry. When it was just them, they watched Wizard television, technology whose existence he hadn’t suspected. The Weasleys had an old fashioned wireless radio, but not a television.   
When there were no Order of the Phoenix operatives coming in from the cold needed an ear and a meal, Harry had Sirius’s and Remus’s full attention. With Sirius, he watched Quidditch games, and learned more about England’s professional Quidditch league. Sirius, it turned out, had been a Beater on the Gryffindor team, and had lots of hilarious stories about outlandish stunts Harry’s dad had pulled to impress his mother before they started dating.  
“Then the idiot found out she never came to Quidditch games,” Sirius said. Harry laughed. Together they cheered on or lamented the teams on television, while Remus corrected Harry’s homework assignments.   
Remus left sports to Harry and Sirius, and settled into the couch to watch history documentaries, nature programs, and quiz shows. Harry found such programming dry in the Muggle world, but Wizarding television was a different story. The history programs were about great wizards like Merlin and John Dee, and how they had shaped Britain, the nature shows about magical creatures like giants and sirens, and the quiz show clues were a mixture of magical facts Harry was surprised he remembered at all from school.  
He loved when he got an answer right, and Remus smiled down at him with a proud look and said, “Well done, Harry.”

After TV, Harry helped Sirius with dinner.  
“So, Mrs. Weasley taught you how to cook?” Harry said.  
“Yeah, and not to detract from Molly’s well-deserved culinary legend, but its easy! I mean, its just bloody Transfiguration, isn’t it?” Sirius said. “Look.”  
The raw broccoli on the table became, under a wave of Sirius’s wand, a broccoli casserole, and the potatoes became a potato soup.   
“Wow. Wish I’d known I was a wizard growing up, making breakfast would have gone a lot faster,” Harry said. “But, you can’t do magic away from school, anyway.”  
“Well….in a wizard household, its harder to detect just who’s casting the spell, so you can try out things for your homework, with my or Remus’s help,” Sirius said.  
This is exactly what Harry had thought having parents would be like. Remus and Sirius answered his questions, spent time with him, and told him what their rules were, what was allowed and not allowed. It was an eerie feeling, that his dreams and wishes had collided with reality. Sirius mistook the awed look that had sneaked onto Harry's face for discomfort, however.   
“Did I come on too strong, there? Look, Harry….” Sirius sighed.   
He took a seat at the kitchen table, and gestured for Harry to do the same. Harry pulled out a chair, and angled it facing Sirius.  
Sirius said, “We never really talked out how much of a presence you want or need to be, in your life. When you were a baby, I felt like we had a real rapport, you and I, but I know you don’t remember all that. I would never want to try and replace James, and play father to you if you find that…too much, or not my place, or something. So, if I ever seem too….as if I’m trying to step into his place, tell you what to do, just let me know. I know I hated being told what to do, when I was 15…”  
Sirius was clearly very nervous, but Harry understood what he was trying to say.  
“Sirius, you’re the only family I have. I don’t have any experience at all, with fathers, or godfathers, or uncles, except for Uncle Vernon, and as far as presences in my life go he wasn't one you'd want. So, I mean, I don’t think you’re doing too much. I’m just glad I have you,” Harry said.  
Sirius looked visibly relieved.   
“Shall I give you a bedtime, and tell you to brush your teeth? I’m supposed to do those sorts of things, right?” Sirius asked.  
Harry tried not to laugh. “I generally turn in round 11, and I know how to brush my teeth,” he said.  
“That makes my life easier, then,” Sirius said.  
Harry laughed. “I just like being around you. I like when you help me with my homework, and watch Quidditch with me, and tell me about my parents. My dad sounds….unintentionally hilarious, actually,” Harry said.  
Sirius laughed, his hoarse, abrupt laugh that held a hint of a bark. “Trust me, James’s best material was always unintentional, and he was a disaster whenever your mum was around.”  
“I think I understand. There’s this girl at school, Cho…and I turn into an idiot whenever she’s around. I just don’t know what to say!” Harry said.  
Sirius looked bemused, and said, “Well, as I always used to tell Prongs, just start with hello.”  
Harry smiled. It made sense, but, he said, “Its so hard even to get that out.”  
“Next time you see her, take a deep breath,” Sirius said.  
“I’ll try that,” Harry said. “Sirius, can I ask you something?”   
Sirius nodded.  
“I heard Tonks and Kingsley saying something about…America. How there’s no extradition there. Doesn’t that mean, that if you made it there, you could live there, and you can’t be brought back to Britain?” Harry asked.  
“Harry…America dropped its extradition treaty with us during the first war with Voldemort because they objected to some of the Ministry’s methods…like throwing people in Azkaban without trials, for instance. But, things could change; at any time, they could renew the treaty,” Sirius said.  
“But, for right now, its possible? That you could be free there? Why don’t you try for it?” Harry said.  
“Because you’re here, Harry. And you need me,” Sirius said.  
“I’d go with you,” Harry said.  
“That’s not what you need right now,” Sirius said. “Look, don’t worry about all this. Tomorrow’s Christmas Eve!”   
In light of everything that had happened, Harry had forgotten. It would be his first Christmas with a family of his own.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly gets to Snape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight Tonks/Snape. For the sake of the story's timeline, Arthur's attack by Nagini happened around the same time as the Dursleys' murder.

“You did a great job with the Christmas green, Remus. What my mother would call ‘tasteful,’” Nymphadora appraised, looking around at the decorated 12, Grimmauld Place. “Eh, Severus?”  
Snape’s black eyebrows raised in subtle surprise at Tonks’s appeal for his appraisal of the Christmas greenery.  
“Perfectly adequate,” he said.  
“Will you be staying here…for Christmas dinner, Severus?” Remus asked, surprised. Snape never stayed for meals.  
Tonks answered before the Potions Master could, and with proud enthusiasm, said, “I convinced the Professor not to spend another Christmas up at the cold, lonely castle!”  
“I had no idea that was your estimation of Hogwarts. I seem to remember you joining in with marked, some would say off key and overloud enthusiasm, whenever the Hogwarts school anthem was sung. Anyone would have mistaken it for true affection for your alma mater,” Severus said, and Remus couldn’t tell if his silky drawl was meant to sting or if it was slightly milder than usual.   
Tonks laughed aloud, her free, boisterous laugh that disarmed new acquaintances and drew attention to the rest of her-the flyaway hair the color of watermelon flesh, the piercings, the ripped jeans, and Clash tshirt. No one who saw Nymphadora Tonks could look away without immediately stealing another glance.  
“I love Hogwarts, of course! But, I’m from Cornwall, remember? Scotland is too cold for my blood pressure or something. I stayed over for Christmas once because a mate of mine had broken up with her bloke, I wanted to be moral support, of course-never again! Fourteen Christmases-you’re made of tougher stuff than me, Professor!” Tonks said. It occurred to Remus for the first time that only a few years before, Tonks had been Snape’s student, and he had known her as a schoolgirl. Was that all that lay at the heart of their familiarity?  
“21 Christmases,” Snape amended. “I chose to spend all of my school holidays at the castle, as a student, as well.”  
“Oh? Some people do, that’s all right,” Tonks said smoothly.   
Remus had never seen Severus get on so well with someone…never but once, of course. His friendship with Lily had baffled many, not the least James, who made it his life’s work to woo Lily when they were barely teens. Her best friend, a taciturn, introverted, thin-skinned and defensive boy with an unhealthy pallor, was his chief obstacle to her affections…but he hadn’t exactly solved that problem by bullying and provoking Snape at every opportunity. Severus had responded with a keen and able repertoire of hexes and jinxes, and Lily was usually left quite put out with both of them, but of course favoring her friend. This pattern of James, Sirius, and Snape getting into scrapes, Lily telling them both off from her perch on the moral high ground, giving Snape the silent treatment and then eventually resuming their twin-like bond of constant closeness and whispered conversations punctuated by Lily’s giggles had continued unaltered, punctuated by Snape’s attempts to discover Remus’s secret, until their fifth year, when Severus responded to Lily’s intervention by calling her a Mudblood.  
Remus wondered if Snape had ever had anything like a friend, since.   
‘Its none of my business,’ Remus reminded himself.  
“Severus, may I have a word?” Remus asked.  
Snape glanced reluctantly at Nymphadora, and said, “I’m fine on my own! I’ll pour us some drinks, since my cousin’s being a churlish host, again.”  
“Or he’s drunk the lot, already,” Snape said.  
“Don’t you start, now!” Nymphadora said, and surprisingly Snape raised an eyebrow and said no more, before following Remus out of the entrance hall. Nymphadora went to the parlor, Remus and Snape to a drawing room off the hallway.  
“About Harry’s Occlumency…” Remus began.  
“He is temperamentally unsuited to the subject. He lacks knowledge of the innerworkings of his own mind, preferring to distract himself with his…capers,” Severus said, with a vehement disgust that rankled Remus.  
“Harry is a good boy. He’s been placed by circumstance in an unenviable position. No one asks to be an orphan. And nor can it be undone,” Remus said. It was a curse, almost like his own lycanthropy.  
“What does one have to do with the other? He is not the first orphan to pass through Hogwarts, nor the charge of its professors, whose care more than adequately makes up for any deficits in the students domestic situation,” Snape said.  
Remus felt as if he had been slapped with a cold hand. “You can’t be serious? You truly think that Hogwarts is equal to a parent?”  
“Or better than, in some cases. If he is still not satisfied, that is his lookout,” Snape said.  
“And I suppose its none of mine if you believe such foolish things, or are merely trying to antagonize me,” Remus said.  
“Why would I bother? I teach Potions, not Care of Magical Creatures, that I should spend my time wrangling beasts,” Snape said.  
A shadow of the wolf flared in rage, but Remus reached into his soul and stilled it, with a rougher hand than usual.  
“I’m a werewolf-so what? You’re a backbiting, sabotaging bastard,” Remus said. “Do you care at all that he is Lily’s son? Or, even at the end, was she just a Mudblood to you?”  
Snape’s dark eyes flared in rage, his already pale face whitened, and he dropped the act he had adopted since becoming a Hogwarts professor, that he felt nothing beyond academic expertise. This was the face that James and Sirius had derived so much vindictive amusement from, his goggle-eyed look of indignation that usually turned into a fit of rage, an explosion of ineffectual insults and Dark Magic. Gone was the appreciative tolerance that he had shown Tonks-he clinched his fists in anger he could barely control.  
“What did I hear? Who said that word? I will not have that kind of language around the children! Harry is already here, up in the TV room, Ron and Ginny will be arriving shortly, and I will not have it! From two Hogwarts professors! Honestly!” Molly fumed, walking into the room wearing a flour dusted apron.  
“Only one of us is currently a Hogwarts professor, Madam,” Snape said.  
“I take the blame, Molly. I was attempting to ask Severus to continue Harry’s Occlumency lessons…but, I made the mistake of becoming…emotional, about the subject,” Remus said, his voice trembling. He was more emotional than he should be, he knew it, about the idea of Harry being left vulnerable to Voldemort, and the insult about his lycanthropy.  
“You’ve stopped them?!” Molly cried, rounding on Snape.  
“If Potter cannot learn, I will not waste my energy teaching him when it is best applied preparing my Fifth years for their O.W.Ls, and such tasks as Dumbledore has entrusted to me,” Snape said coldly.  
“And teaching Harry Occlumency is one of them, I believe?” Molly said.  
“That is between the Headmaster and myself,” Snape said.  
“Maybe Dumbledore has it backwards…if Harry is a Seer, why try to restrain a natural gift? It can come in handy, can’t it, Remus? Knowing what’s coming? He saved Arthur,” Molly said, apparently quite giving up on Snape and seeking reassurance from Remus.  
Remus sighed. “Harry’s visions aren’t general, nor are they of the future. He’s not divining events that have not yet happened, like a Seer, he is seeing events as they happen, and his purview seems to be limited to what Lord Voldemort is doing at the time. It is as if…he can read his mind, involuntarily.”  
“Surely Dumbledore knows why!” she said.  
“He has theories, to be sure. But, in all my experiences with Defense Against the Dark Arts, I myself have never seen anything like this,” Remus said. Molly’s wrinkles became more pronounced.  
“Then your experience is woefully limited, and thankfully the Order of the Phoenix is not entirely reliant on its width and breadth,” Snape said.  
“Oh, no one is going to beg you to change your mind! But just how would you feel if any harm came to that boy because these visions of You-Know-Who led him into danger, or brought it to him? Be a man!” Molly said.   
Remus expected another blow-up, but Snape’s face had a curious expression that Remus had no name for. It was as if he was astonished by Molly, and had never seen anyone or anything quite like her before.   
“You knew his mother, didn’t you?” Molly said.  
“What has he told you?” Snape said.  
Remus knew, somehow, that he meant Dumbledore. Molly ignored this remark, and continued,  
“I didn’t know her long, but my brothers were in the Order the first time, you remember them, and Arthur and I volunteered the Burrow for a safehouse, from time to time. I met her a few times, I didn’t know her well, but I doubt you’ll find a nicer woman. She had such sweet ways! Gentle. Strong, but gentle, at her core. I can’t imagine letting any harm come to that woman’s son. Sometimes…I almost feel her watching Harry. Why wouldn’t she be?” Molly said.   
Molly, it seemed, had guessed much from Remus’s omission that Snape and Lily had been friends…and she had disregarded Sirius’s assertion that it had not been a serious bond. Her own intuition had carried her far.   
“Where is the boy? I will try again to teach him, but it is a subtle art,” Snape said. He sounded strained, but momentarily mollified.   
“The TV room is upstairs, Professor,” Molly said. Snape swept upstairs, his robes trailing like black smoke. When they could no longer hear his footfalls, Remus said,

“Damn, you’re good.”  
“Language!” Molly warned.  
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have rehashed the past,” Remus said. “I grew frustrated. I cannot allow myself to do that, and I know it.”  
“Because of your…condition? Oh, you poor, sweet man. Does it get worse when you get emotional?” Molly asked.  
“I don’t want to alarm you, but it is a rare phenomenon-documented, but rare-that lycanthropes sometimes transform even when the moon is not full, when angered,” Remus said.  
“I don’t see any chance of that happening to you, Professor. You’re a smart man, and you work at your self- control every minute of the day,” Molly said.  
“Don’t rely on the man to gauge what the beast will do, Molly,” Remus said.  
“A man is someone who does his best. A beast is something vicious and barely controlled. I think that there’s a beast in you, and a beast in that man that just went upstairs, and one of you is better at controlling it than the other,” Molly said.  
“How did you know…to mention Lily, to get him to teach Harry to protect his mind?” Remus asked.  
Molly shrugged. “I’m a woman. We’re good guessers. You told me they were friends in school…what boy could be best friends with a girl like that and not feel more? Lily was a gorgeous woman, I’m sure she was a stunning girl. She and James married quite young, obviously, they must have been school sweethearts, and I can’t imagine her best friend liked it very much. Carried it a bit far, going off and joining the Death Eaters…but, maybe he thought it would make her chase him to get him back on the right side. Like a little boy, stomping his feet and having a tantrum, so that someone will come running. I don’t know, but I guessed.”  
“With guesswork like that, you’d be quite some Auror,” Remus said.  
Molly laughed. “Too many rules! And anyway, who would be here, making sure your husband doesn’t give us all cirrhosis with the Christmas pudding? Too much brandy in the batter, I said! Does he want to make good and sure it will be flammable when he pours the brandy on top?!”  
“You’re going to let Sirius light the pudding?” Remus said, surprised. That was quite an honor, usually reserved for the head of a family.  
“It is his house, isn’t it?” Molly said. She needlessly wiped her hands on her apron, and a worried look stole across her face. “What a week this has been! The Dursleys, dying like that…my Arthur, getting hurt doing his duty…we’ll be down to St. Mungo’s to visit for Christmas…Ginny has been beside herself…its worse than last time, isn’t it Remus?”  
“Last time, we lost everything, Molly. This time, we won’t let him get that far,” Remus said. Molly looked a bit cheered, and together they went to the kitchen.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius and Molly collaborate on Christmas dinner while giving Remus and Ginny advice; Harry and Hermione, and Nymphadora and Severus get closer

Hermione arrived at Grimmauld Place before Ron. When Harry came down the stairs, Hermione was standing in the entrance hall of the gloomy, old Victorian house, holding her luggage and wearing a snow-dusted pink knit hat.  
“Harry!” she said, roses in her cheeks from the cold. Harry found it appealing. He hurried down the stairs, and his best friend hugged him enthusiastically. Harry was embarrassed when he felt her chest, soft against his, and pulled away, first.  
“Guess what?” she laughed. “We’re neighbors!”  
“We are?” he said.  
“Yes, I live in Notting Hill! You’re fifteen minutes away!” Hermione said.  
“Perfect,” he said. He’d had nightmares about what the Dursleys’ murders must have been like. Too little time to run, and green light, just like his parents’s deaths. But, Hermione was happy that they now resided in the same city, and her happiness at that warmed his heart.  
“Are you all right?” she asked.  
“Yeah, Remus and Sirius have been great. We play chess, we watch telly, we talk…” Harry said. “and Sirius has been cooking up a storm, for Christmas. Everything should be ready, soon.”  
“Brilliant. But, I think you know what I mean, Harry,” Hermione said.  
He sighed. He did, indeed, know, but he wasn’t sure what to say.  
“The Dursleys hated me. They said horrible things about my parents, and hated me for being a wizard…but, that doesn’t mean they should die. Now, Dudley’s an orphan, like me,” Harry said. “I didn’t think we would ever have anything in common.”  
Hermione’s expression was one of patience, and empathy. She wasn’t going to tell him how to feel, or ask leading questions. But, she was there to listen to whatever he needed to say.  
Harry helped Hermione up to a spare bedroom, a girl’s room with the name ‘Andromeda’ on the door that looked as if it could have belonged to Estella Havisham, with its Victorian, classically feminine décor.  
“Look at this lamp! It looks like Tiffany & Co.,” Hermione said.  
“Um…who?” Harry asked.  
“Louis Comfort Tiffany. He was a furniture designer in the late 19th and early 20th century,” Hermione said. “This sort of stained glass, like the flowers, here, on the lampshade, was his specialty. But, clearly this is a Wizarding take on it. Look.”  
Harry looked closer, at the stained glass flowers on the golden glass. They were not flowers at all, but pixies, and when observed, they danced hand in hand, waving across the lampshade. Harry smiled. As he looked over at Hermione, the light from the lamp was caught in her brown eyes, and she too was looking, enchanted, at the lamp. Harry felt like this moment, of just looking at her, could go on for a long time, maybe forever, and there would be no need for words. There had been moments like that in the library the year before, when she was helping him with the Tri-Wizard tournament, and Ron hadn’t been there to divert attention with his jokes, a game of chess, talk about Quidditch, or gripes about classes and life in general. Harry loved Ron…but something funny happened whenever he and Hermione found themselves alone.  
“Look at this music box,” Hermione said, and when she opened a cherrywood music box the dancer within was not a ballerina, but a little being made of light, gracefully pirouetting. It leapt off the small needle where it stood, onto Hermione’s finger. She gasped, and the firefly creature bowed, and flew out the open window, into the gray-white London sky.  
“You set it free,” Harry marveled.  
They continued to explore Andromeda’s room. Hermione gasped at the wardrobe of witchy clothes in the closet. Harry had noticed that wizards, when in their secret enclave of magical communities, tended to dress rather old-fashioned, like the subjects of sepia colored Victorian photographs. Hermione giggled at the high-necked, lace trimmed velvet, taffeta, silk, and satin dresses, and then she found one made of a diaphanous silk that looked like it had been woven from snow, moonlight, and molten opals, and sewn to the bodice was a butterfly with translucent wings, as if crafted from glass. Hermione gasped, impressed.  
“I’ll step outside, if you want to put it on,” Harry said.  
“Oh, I couldn’t. This Andromeda person…does she live here? I can’t just wear her clothes!” Hermione said.  
“Sirius is the only one of his family left, remember? Whoever she is, I don’t think she’s here, anymore. I’ll wait outside,” Harry said.  
He went outside, and shut the door behind him. Behind the door, Hermione was naked, he realized belatedly. Only the aged oak wood of the door separated him from…well, he could, on the one hand, surmise how she looked in just her underwear, but he didn’t know the specifics, and had never thought about it, before. It dawned on him that he had basically requested that she get naked. His face burned…he felt idiotic, and on top of that, disloyal: Ron had been so miserable and furious that Hermione went to the Yule Ball with Viktor Krum the year before because he fancied her, even if he hadn’t said so out loud, it was obvious.  
He and Ron had stopped speaking once, and it had made Harry miserable, even though Hermione had stayed by his side. Ron was Ron: from the minute they met, Ron had put him at ease in the Wizarding World, because he was simply so much fun and so understanding, when he was at his best. Sure, he could be sulky and short-tempered, but no one was perfect. Harry had never had a friend before him, and he wasn’t about to lose Ron again. If he fancied Hermione, Harry figured he should give him a chance to do something about it…  
“All right, come in, but I look ridiculous! This dress doesn’t suit my complexion at all!” she said.  
The opal dress with the glass butterfly at the bodice fit Hermione’s bosom and waist perfectly, lovingly hugging the curves of her body which Harry hadn’t noticed at all, before, not even at the Yule Ball, where she had looked so beautiful and happy. She had gathered her hair back. Though the room was dimly lit, what light there was seemed to generously refract from the pearl colored silk, and into Hermione’s eyes, which were also lit by her unsure smile.  
She was beautiful. Humble, up for anything, be it ransacking a closet or stealing a hippogriff and turning back time, she was clever, wise, and his stomach was turning somersaults at the sight of her so beautiful in that white dress.  
“Its got a sort of train, and its tight at the bottom, so its sort of hard to walk in,” Hermione said, as she walked towards him, and she tripped. Harry extended his arms, and caught her as she fell. Her chest ended up against his, again, and as she righted herself, she looked up. Their eyes met, and another moment that felt like it needed no words and never needed to end caught them.  
The door burst open, and Ginny was saying, “Mum said go up to the room that said ‘Andromeda on the door, and you were already in here, Hermione.” She stopped when she saw Ron and Hermione. She looked from one to the other, her face a mask of astonishment.  
“Oh,” Ginny said.  
“Ginny!” Hermione said, as if in protest, as if there was something she should explain.  
“Don’t, Hermione. Not right now. Just…not now. I have to focus on Dad,” Ginny said, and left the room. They heard her footsteps on the stairs until she reached the first floor.  
Hermione flopped on the bed, and sighed loudly in frustration, looking miserable.  
“What was that about?” Harry asked.  
“Oh, Harry! You are hopeless, you know that?” Hermione said.  
“What? What am I missing?” he asked.  
“Ginny feels I misled her,” she said.  
“About what?” Harry asked.  
“You!” she said.  
“But…you were the one who said Ginny doesn’t fancy me, anymore. She’s dating that Michael bloke in Ravenclaw, isn’t she?” Harry said.  
He hadn’t payed much attention. Even though he spent several weeks of the summer with the Weasleys, Harry was usually playing Quidditch with the Weasley brothers, while Mrs. Weasley commandeered Ginny’s time helping her with household chores. They were parallel lines that passed but never met, especially when she fancied him and barely talked.  
“Yes, but…look, she asked my advice, about what she should do, about you. Its painful to fancy someone so much you don’t know what to say around them, you can’t loosen up,” Hermione said. “At my old school, before Hogwarts, Rochester Prep, there was this one boy I simply adored, Hamilton Birtwistle…”  
“Birtwistle?” Harry chortled.  
“Well, he had very arresting eyes, and I blushed as red as a Howler around him, so I sympathize with Ginny’s plight wholeheartedly,” Hermione said.  
“Did you two keep up, you and old Hamilton?” Harry said.  
Hermione smirked. “Stop, and try to keep up,” Hermione chided. Harry smiled.  
“In any case, I told her to try and take the pressure off by dating other boys. Not, you know, to chase them, but if anyone asked her, not to say no, if she thought she could like them. Maybe not as much as she liked you, but…” Hermione said. “now, it looks as if I only said that to have a clear shot at you!”  
“I don’t think Ginny thinks like that,” Harry said. “And, she did say yes to Michael, so…”  
“Yes, but that was before she saw us, like this!” Hermione spluttered. “Now, to her, I must look…”  
“Hermione, I don’t feel that way about Ginny. I mean, she’s…pretty. But, I don’t know her very well, do I? She’s always there, but we never talk. I sort of thought we were both pretty embarrassed about the way she used to feel, and…I don’t know. Its just hard to talk to her. But, you don’t care that I’m the Boy Who Lived. If I haven’t done my Potions essay or my ideas are pants or if I’m just dead wrong, you tell me so. And, you’re there when I don’t even know what to say, or when there’s nothing to say and we’re just eating Cauldron Cakes on the Hogwarts Express,” Harry said.  
Hermione was softening, and laughed a little, as she said, “You hate Cauldron Cakes-your favorite are Chocolate Frogs, and you eat too many of them.”  
“Well, see, that was a test, and you passed it, well done,” Harry said.  
“I never met a test I didn’t pass! Or one that didn’t give me acid reflux,” Hermione said.  
“You? Your stomach gets bothered before tests? I never knew that,” Harry said.  
“No matter how much you know about someone, there’s always something new to learn,” Hermione said.  
“Yeah,” Harry said, not wanting to break their eye contact.  


“Hmm…Trifle and Tipsy Laird? Aren’t they the same thing?” Remus asked.  
“Ha! There! I told you that you went overboard with the desserts! Christmas pudding, Trifle, Tipsy Laird, and a spice cake with a marzipan nativity scene?!” Molly said.  
Sirius was wearing an apron that said, ‘Queen of the Kitchen’ over his habitual Victorian gentleman’s clothing, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up, and an admiring gleam in his eye as he regarded his handiwork.  
“What? Harrys got a sweet tooth, haven’t you noticed? He was always like that. He’d eat bits of Chocolate Frog out of my hand, drenching me with his particularly viscous baby drool. It was disgusting, and strangely charming, all at the same time,” Sirius said.  
“That is so sweet! Did you two see a great deal of him when he was a baby?” Molly said.  
Sirius gave a slightly embarrassed laugh, and said, “Well, you see, before James and Lily went into hiding, they were living at his parents’ place, and I moved there when I was around Harry’s age, and just never left. Real estate was the last thing on anybody’s mind, back then, so we just never left the nest.”  
“Families tried to stick together, back then,” Molly agreed. “Remus, did you live with the Potters, too?”  
Remus looked down at the marzipan Holy Family. “Then, as now, my role in the war required me to go underground, and live amongst other werewolves. That is my role,” he said, with a touch of barely restrained bitterness.  
“But, not your only talent! You’re not just a werewolf, or just a spy! You’re an expert on Defense Against the Dark Arts!” Sirius said.  
“An unemployed one,” Remus said.  
Molly was rolling the batter of some gingerbread cookies. She picked up the rolling pin and, shaking it perilously close to Remus’s face, said, “Remus John Lupin! Don’t you dare let that bitter old Potions master get under your skin! Severus Snape is the most singularly unhappy man I have ever met, and misery loves company-but don’t you dare give him the satisfaction! He used your lycanthropy to get you fired, don’t let him use it to ruin your Christmas, or your self esteem!”  
“Mum!” Ginny said, rushing into the kitchen, “Don’t kill Professor Lupin!”  
Sirius roared with laughter, and with a bemused smile, Remus said, “Oh, no, Ginny, she’s not threatening my person, she’s giving me advice!”  
Ginny frowned confusedly, and said, “Doesn’t look like it. Merlin’s beard, Mum-you made a marzipan nativity scene?”  
“Oh, not me-this madman,” Molly said.  
Sirius took a bow.  
Ginny laughed.  
“Are Harry and Hermione and Ron catching up?” Molly said.  
“Ron’s unpacking. Hermione and Harry are snogging,” Ginny said.  
“What?!” Molly said.  
“Thank God! Subliminal messages do work!” Sirius said.  
“What?” Molly said.  
“Well, when Harry was a baby, I used to whisper pearls of wisdom in his ear, and hope they would stick. I alway hoped he'd find a girl like Lily: smart, down to earth, but with a sense of wonder, open-minded. I used to tell him, ‘Fall in love with a girl just like your mum,’ and he has,” Sirius said. “I owe my life to Hermione Granger. She’s a wonderful girl. I hope he doesn’t let her go.”  
“Hear, hear. She was my brightest student, by far, during my brief time at Hogwarts,” Remus said.  
“A toast, to young love?” Sirius suggested, and poured some glasses of the brandy he had used in baking.  
Ginny burst into tears. Molly looked alarmed, but quickly pulled her only daughter into her ample bosom. Remus and Sirius exchanged worried glances.  
“I love him!!” Ginny hiccupped. “I always loved him! Before I even met him! And he’s just like all the stories of him, so brave and kind and…and…he saved me, he saved Dad, he’s a hero…Hermione didn’t even grow up knowing anything about him!”  
“Be that as it may, they seem to have a deep connection,” Sirius said.  
“Ginny, we talked about this: you’re too young to know what love is,” Molly said.  
“Well, hold on, Molly. I found the person that I knew I was going to love all my life when I was in school, and so did James and Lily. It can happen. But…we love people because of how we feel when we spend time with them, not because of how we wish they would feel about us. That’s not love: it’s a wish. Infatuation is a very strong wish that something you want can come true in regards to another person falling in love with you,” Remus said.  
“What’s the difference?!” Ginny cried, impatiently. Her mother winced with embarrassment at her child raising her voice, but Remus was unflappable. As an educator, he had dealt with misbehaving teenagers before.  
He sighed, and began, “When I was at Hogwarts, I had a dear friend. She was kind, funny, smart, and an amazing listener. She always understood, and kept people’s secrets. When I told her that I’m gay, she was so, so very kind. It was a different time, you see, people weren’t always so kind. If the wrong people found out, or suspected, things could even get dangerous. There was a lot of moral objection, still, and…I’m sorry to say I internalized it, it had soaked into how I felt about myself. But, my friend, she made me feel accepted. She had another friend, a boy she had known even before Hogwarts, and they were as close as twins. It was like they could read each other’s minds, or speak in a secret language. He was deeply in love with her, but she just couldn’t bring herself to feel that way about him.”  
“Why?” Ginny asked, “if they knew each other so well?”  
“Love is a mystery, Ginny. We can’t make it happen where it will not, nor can we deny it or stop it for long where it appears. Her friend never understood this. Every year, he wanted her more, and grew more and more angry and frustrated that she wasn’t in love with him, as he was with her. She did fall in love-with a boy her friend didn’t like very much. But, she tried to ignore her feelings as long as she could, out of respect for the boy who was her friend,” Remus said.  
“That sounds messy. What happened?” Ginny said.  
“All the desire that her friend felt for her turned to possession, and thwarted from having the thing he wanted, he became frustrated and angry with her for not giving him what he wanted. They had a horrible argument, and didn’t speak again,” Remus said.  
“That’s awful!” Ginny said.  
“It was. When we want to possess the person we are infatuated with, its frustrating. We lose sight of why we admired them, and simply become angry at the feeling that they are constantly rejecting us. But, Ginny, no one meant to hurt you. We must accept that there are things out of our control. Unless you want to become angry, and take your vengeance on the person you think you love,” Remus said.  
Ginny was clearly taking all this in. She nodded, and her brown eyes looked a shade darker as she took in what Remus had said, and what he meant.  
“I don’t want to hate Hermione, or Harry. I know they weren’t trying to hurt me,” Ginny said.  
“Very good, sweetheart,” Molly said, and consolingly rubbed her shoulder. She turned to Sirius, and said, “You’ll want to speak to Harry about having girls in his room!”  
Sirius and Remus exchanged a look.

“Mistletoe!” Nymphadora Tonks sang playfully.  
Severus Snape sat in one of the velvet easy chairs in the drawing room, and sipped a brandy Tonks had poured.  
“Mistletoe has many uses, Miss Tonks, not just the one that you are implying,” Snape said.  
“I’m sure, but get your mind off Potions for once! There’s only one thing you do with mistletoe on Christmas day!” Tonks said.  
“You know, in Norse legend, mistletoe led to the end of days?” Snape said.  
Tonks raised her eyebrow in skepticism, and said, “Really?”  
Snape nodded his assent. “It was prophesied that the death of the god Balder would lead to the end of days. His mother, the goddess Frigga, made every possible weapon on earth swear not to harm him. She did not exact a promise from the mistletoe, thinking it a humble, harmless plant. So, the trickster god Loki used mistletoe as a weapon. War between the gods began.”  
“Ah…like the way the Muggle nations broke out into World War I at the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand,” Tonks said.  
Snape raised his eyebrows in surprise, impressed. “Yes, quite,” he said.  
Tonks could tell she had impressed him, and relished it. “I think the moral of the story is to never underestimate a threat. And…that mothers will do anything to protect their kids. Even speak to the very things that could hurt them.”  
“I don’t need you to start in, too. I agreed to teach the boy again, let it be,” Snape said severely.  
Tonks frowned, confused. “What?”  
“You were alluding to Lily?” he said.  
“I wasn’t alluding to anything, and I don’t appreciate being accused,” Nymphadora said. “But, its clear she’s on your mind. People we loved, its natural to think about them at Christmas.”  
“ ‘The murdered do haunt their murderers,’” Snape said.  
“‘Wuthering Heights,’” Nymphadora said.  
He nodded his assent.  
“You’re not a murderer, Severus,” Tonks said.  
“With all due respect, how do you know, Miss Tonks?” Snape said.  
“You’re not Lily Potter’s murderer. That’s Voldemort,” she said.  
“Loki didn’t aim the mistletoe at Balder himself. He used a blind god, placed it in his hands, and helped him to throw,” Severus said.  
“Are you saying that you gave Voldemort a tool to hurt the Potters?” Tonks said. “Did you know at the time, that that’s what you were doing?”  
Snape’s face was impassive as always, then Tonks saw a flicker of pain in his dark, dark eyes. His face softened, his stoicism relented, and with redolent regret, he quietly said, “No.”  
Tonks sighed, and took a sip of brandy.  
“I can’t tell you that you didn’t do anything wrong. But, you’re trying to make it right, in your way,” Tonks said. “it must be hard to look at him, feeling the way you do about yourself.”  
“Who?” Severus asked.  
“Harry,” Tonks said, and waited for the explosion. The mention of Harry’s name to Severus so often resulted in a vehement, vitriolic recitation of the boy’s faults, as Severus saw them.  
“I tell myself that if he was brilliant, if he was a quiet, diligent, hardworking student, if he showed promise or effort, if he was what people whispered of him, then it would be worth it, that she died to save him. But, I cannot see anything in him that was worth her life. She…she was a light in the world. The only light that ever dared shine into my life,” Snape said. “he is too much like his father…lazy, distracted, cares only for Quidditch and a good time. Lily was…sensitive, compassionate, wise, so very sweet…”  
“Harry is a good boy. Give him another chance. He knows you hate him, he just doesn’t know why, and it puts him on edge. Goodness knows, he has enough experience not being liked or wanted by the adults in his life,” Tonks said.  
Severus winced. “Well, I suppose you will have to find someone else to put your mistletoe into use with,” he said.  
“Why?” Tonks asked.  
“I just waxed rhapsodically about a girl I fancied as a schoolboy, and admitted to hating a child, one of my students,” Severus said. “What about any of that do you find appealing?”  
“Oh, nothing. That was all a load of bollocks. But, I still find your voice dead sexy,” Nymphadora said. She held her hand out to him, and he put his drink aside, and stood. Tonks came closer, bridged the distance between their bodies. Her Ramones tshirt kissed Snape’s dark wool frock coat. She held the mistletoe over their heads. “It always got under my skin like that…even when I was in school…and when I was in seventh year…Merlin’s tit, you have no bloody idea how I felt, sitting in your class...!”  
“Miss Tonks, settle down…” Snape drawled, but this led her to shiver with her eyes closed in savoring heat.  
“What, you don’t believe me?” she said.  
“I have never, and will never, fraternize with my students in the manner you are alluding to, Miss Tonks,” Snape said.  
“I graduated four years ago, Professor,” Tonks said.  
“How gratifying to know that I was never forgotten by you, Miss Tonks,” Snape said sarcastically.  
She wound her arms around his neck, and Snape said, “Miss Tonks, I am not a good man. I am not a handsome man…I have never made anyone else happy.”  
“Professor, I think you’re sexy, and only my opinion counts, to me. As to being a good man…you’re trying damn hard to be. And I’m pretty happy right now. Maybe just because its Christmas…” Tonks said, and leaned in, brushing her lips against his. Snape’s arms came around her waist as he kissed her back.  
He wondered if Molly Weasley was right, and Lily was watching over Harry. If so, did she ever spare a glance at him, too? Did she forgive him? Had she somehow brought this miracle, Nymphadora, into his life?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus had doubts, and Sirius soothes them, as the Order of the Phoenix celebrates Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays!

“And of just what concern is it to witches and wizards, the seasonal condescending salutations of a hereditary Muggle oligarch?” Snape drawled coldly, standing in the corner of the drawing room, holding a brandy.   
Remus didn't reply, and continued tuning the TV to the Queen's Christmas day address. It took some doing to find the Muggle channels, but he was used to the quirks of the old television.  
Tonks put a hand on his arm to stop his silken tirade, but Sirius made a dismissive noise, rolled his eyes, and said, “The Queen is a witch. Or, at least, a Squib. Everyone knows she’s descended from the sorceress Melusina. The last documented Animagus to take a dragon form, actually. And she was a slippery one! Galivanted all about Britain and Europe, seducing knights…”  
Molly chortled unexpectedly, and said, “Oh, is that right? Well, God save the Queen!”  
“Mum, don’t make it weird,” Ginny said.   
She had recovered from both her bout of tears in the kitchen, and the loss of her romantic prospects with Harry. After penning a letter to a boy called Michael Corner, and sending it by Ron’s owl Pigwidgeon, she had sat down to play Exploding Snap with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. The air had changed around Harry and Hermione. They felt comfortable leaning against each others’ arms, sneaking flirty but shy glances at each other. Hermione, never short of boldness, was usually the first to entwine her hand with Harry’s, and even picked some sweater fluff off his shoulder. Remus smiled, feeling that Harry’s happiness and future were certain.  
He switched on the TV, and the assembled current residents of Number 12 watched Elizabeth I’s Christmas address. There was something comforting about the steady tone and gaze of the U.K.’s head of state, a grandmotherly and prim woman whose personage provided continuity to people all over the globe, whether they believed in the crown, or not, irrespective of gender, ethnicity, and nationality, and whatever time zone or side of the equator they resided in. Remus smiled. There were some things you could rely on like that: Hogwarts, Dumbledore, Elvis Costello, the Queen, and Christmas. He looked at Sirius, and said,   
“Where do you get these tall tales?”   
Sirius smirked. Ah, that smirk… ‘fashionably sensitive, but too cool to care’, as a singer once sang. It had given Remus shivers since he was 13, and still did. But, the thing was, Sirius did care. He had worked hard to overcome his issues with anger, regret, depression, and squabbling with Molly when he was in a sour mood. He had worked hard to create a family and home for Harry, and Remus found that he felt more at home, too.  
The good we do, he had always hoped, was like the warm, languid, and illuminating encroachment of dawn-it did not stop until light covered our whole world. He felt hopeful-maybe just because it was Christmas, and everyone he cared for was in the same room. Oh, and Severus was there, too, like a spare slipper.  
After the Queen’s address, everyone sat down for Molly’s and Sirius’s Christmas meal: a goose, roasted potatoes and other vegetables, beef, ham, and finally, dessert.  
“Molly, dear, was this all for me? You shouldn’t have,” Arthur said drily, taking his attack by Nagini and recovery in good stride.  
“Me?! Speak to this madman. A marzipan Holy Family on top of a self indulgently huge spice cake…” Molly fumed…but Remus spied bemusement and pride in her eyes. She had become truly fond of Sirius.   
“Compensating for something, Black?” Snape sniped.  
“Your curiosity is a tell, darling,” Sirius quipped, and Harry and Ron laughed. Hermione stifled a laugh, too.  
“Cake or pudding first, everyone?” Sirius asked.  
“Pudding. And you’ve got to light it, because its your house!” Harry said eagerly, reveling in having a home and a father.  
“Under usual circumstances, too right-but I’m off brandy, at the moment,” Sirius said, ruffling Harry’s hair.  
“Can we use butterbeer?” Ginny suggested.  
“Go for it. Remus, you do the honors,” Sirius said.  
Remus hesitated, looked at Sirius, at Arthur…they were real wizards, not creatures, they belonged in homes, not dark forests, they had more right…  
Sirius looked at Remus with steadfast compassion, and love: real love, old love. It held him steady in his breath, and as he breathed, Remus realized that his self loathing was getting in his way.  
But, he couldn’t let it spoil the continuity of Christmas.   
“Very well,” he said, and Molly, Arthur, Sirius, Nymphadora, Harry, Ron, Ginny, Hermione, Fred, and George clapped as he poured the butterbeer on the plum pudding, and then, with his wand, cast, “Incendio!” and lit the pudding on fire.  
It burned perfectly. The sweet crust formed, and Remus tapped it with a spoon and said, “Happy Christmas, everyone.”  
Sirius kissed his cheek.  
Molly looked at both of them with the same affection she regarded Harry and her sons, and said loudly, brightly, “Happy Christmas, everyone!”


End file.
